Depending on how you view it, Saturday’s AFC playoff game between the Jets and Colts will be either a win-win for Herman Edwards and Tony Dungy or a lose-lose.

Each man desperately wants to lead his team into the next round en route to a possible Super Bowl berth, but neither really wants to defeat the other, because they’re family without the shared bloodlines.

For the progress of more minority head coaches being hired in the NFL, Saturday’s game cannot be anything other than a win-win as it draws attention to the first playoff game in league history between two teams coached by African-Americans.

“I thought about that a while back,” Edwards said yesterday. “Tony did, too. It’s a step in the right direction for what the NFL is trying to adopt. Tony worked for it his whole career. I think I’ve worked for it, too.”

Edwards, though, resents the fact that “they’re putting it all on football,” adding, “That’s our society. That’s kind of what bothers me a little bit. It’s not all about football. It’s in the marketplace. It’s in the business world, too. It’s everywhere.

“I think that all of a sudden we’re making this big push, trying to put it all on the NFL. It’s not the NFL; it’s an American issue. We can never forget about that. It’s good that the NFL is looking at it. But America needs to look at [itself] in the face, too.”

Dungy, Edwards said, is the reason he’ll be coaching in Saturday’s game. Dungy is an Edwards friend first, but also a mentor, crucial to the development of his NFL coaching career.

Edwards was Dungy’s assistant head coach in charge of defensive backs for five years in Tampa Bay before the Jets took a worthy chance on him before last season.

Before that, the two worked together with the Chiefs, with whom Dungy was a defensive backs coach and Edwards was in the personnel department.

The two, just months apart in age, met in 1977 while playing in a college all-star game and both went to the NFL as undrafted rookies.

They’ve been close since, their families inseparable, the two of them on the phone with each other virtually every week during the season – including this week.

“It will be a tough game to be in,” Edwards said. “This is my first time facing Tony and it’s not a lot of fun, but it’s part of competing. Probably the only reason I’m standing here is because of him. I appreciate that. He’s been a mentor for me for a long time.”

The emotion of the Edwards-Dungy matchup is not lost on Jets players and coaches.

“It’s going to be emotional for Herm,” Ray Mickens said. “It’ll be the teacher against the student. You know he’ll be fired up for this.”

Jets defensive coordinator Ted Cottrell said, “The competitiveness in both of those guys will make their friendship go off the board for four quarters.”

It, too, will be an invaluable three-hour advertisement for more NFL teams to hire competent minority head coaches instead of merely going through the motions to appease the league mandate of interviewing at least one minority candidate before making a hire.

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Coaching colleagues (Tale of the Tape)

Tony Dungy and Herman Edwards met at a college all-star game in 1977. Their paths crossed again on the Chiefs’ staff (1991) and converged when Dungy, as Buccaneers head coach, hired Edwards as defensive backs coach before promoting him to assistant head coach. Here’s a look at the men who will lead the Colts and Jets, respectively, into a playoff matchup at Giants Stadium on Saturday: